neural

Definition

An adjective marking approaches built from layered linear maps and nonlinearities — loosely inspired by biological neurons, but not a claim of biological fidelity. It survives mainly as a label distinguishing learned, differentiable components from classical hand-engineered ones: neural network, neural rendering, neural search. The metaphor is historical; the math is linear algebra plus gradient descent.

Explainers using this term

• Paper Explained: Compile by Training — Turning a Natural-Language Spec into a Function That Runs LocallyCompile by Training: Turning Natural-Language Specifications into Local Neural Functions
• Distillation vs. Quantization vs. Pruning — Three Roads to a Smaller ModelDistilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network
• A Field Guide to Distillation Recipes — logit, feature, attention, selfDistilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network